You have to wonder- what were these guys thinking? The only media visual they could have chosen that would send a worse message of forecast certainty was a dart board…or maybe something else?
MIT’s “wheel of climate” – image courtesy Donna Coveney/MIT
The Greenhouse Gamble: Ronald Prinn, director of MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, and his group have revised their model that shows how much hotter the Earth’s climate will get in this century without substantial policy change. Standing with the group’s “roulette wheel” are, from left to right, Mort Webster, professor in the Engineering Systems Division; Adam Schlosser, principal research scientist at the Center for Global Change Science; Prinn, the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry; and Sergey Paltsev, principal research scientist, MIT Energy Initiative.
Popular Science writes:
It’s time to call your bookie, because the line on global warming is in. A new paper from MIT breaks down the odds of different outcomes from global warming, based on whether governments take action now or later. And if you’re taking that action, bet on “government getting involved” to beat the spread, as last week an important climate change bill made it out committee in the House of Representatives.
The bill, named the American Clean Energy and Security Act, would institute a cap-and-trade program, and reduce carbon emissions by 17 percent over fifteen years. The plan also calls for increased research into alternative energy, and provides $750 billion in subsidies to consumers to help offset the increase in energy cost the bill would cause.
See the compete article here
With that kind of cash payout, and since an MIT odds calculating machine is involved in making the modeling forecasts over 400 model runs, maybe this would be a more appropriate prop for the MIT photo op:
@ur momisugly crosspatch (10:56:11) :
The ‘warmists’ / ‘alarmists’ typically have 2 arguments:
1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas so it must be causing warming
2. If you don’t agree you are worse than Hitler
(From “Captain Carpenter”, by John Crowe Ransome,
with apologies for minor alterations)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=179130
Since 2001, Prinn has been walking around the casino with a $2,600,000.00 grant from the National Science Foundation in his pocket. He’s lost his original stake, and he needs to get the house to raise his limit.
His study came out the same week as the Cap ‘n Trade bill came out of the House committee. Smart politician.
John Galt (09:35:52) :
“OT: Obama plan: Paint roofs white to save world
Suggests light colors would reduce global warming”
The Times report said a year ago, Rosenfeld and several colleagues estimated changing the color of roofs in 100 of the largest cities around the world would save 44 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
“Now, you smile, but [Rosenfeld has] done a calculation, made a paper on this, and if you take all the buildings and make their roofs white and if you make the pavement more of a concrete type of color rather than a black type of color, and you do this uniformly… it’s the equivalent of reducing the carbon emissions due to all the cars on the road for 11 years, you just take them off the road for 11 years,” Chu told the Times.”
Wow, as an engineer, I would like to review the calculations and assumptions behind this claim. Remember Chu is the guy who can’t convert correctly between Centigrade and Degrees F. so why would I trust his claims. Sure, I believe that in the summer, a white roof is better if you have no shade trees, but not all of us live in warm sunny climates all year long. Doesn’t that dark roof help in the winter when it is cold outside and the sun is shinning ? Is this benefit so large when you have a vented attic plus 10 inches of insulation between the attic and the and living space. I see the energy savings from reduced AC for the roof, but not sure about the benefit of light colored pavement. Would the reflection from roads really make a significant difference in the earth temperature
I would gladly let them paint my roof if they would only back off on mpg standards and let me drive my comfortable, safe car that getsonly gets 24 mpg. Of course a white roof would not make a difference in energy usage anyway since my roof sees no sun in the summer due to shade trees. Of course I could cut down the trees and convert the wood to renewable, green fuel to make them happy with a white roof and a tax credit.
BTW Chu has worked on alternative fuels for a while now. Can anyone cite his accomplishments in this field or has he just wasted taxpayers money?
@ur momisugly Don Shaw (11:50:00) :
I lived in southern Nevada for a few years, on the edge of the Mojave desert. It’s very sunny there.
I noticed that all the school buses had white roofs and most people drove light-colored cars (‘desert-friendly paint’). Strangely, the local builders never caught on by using light roofing materials.
When I posted that article, I was most interested in the irony. The official line is the Urban Heat Island effect is negligible, but here we are being urged to combat AGW by reducing UHI.
Otherwise, it’s sound advice if you live someplace that’s sunny most of the year. A light or white roof will help with summer cooling if you live in a sunny climate but will make your furnace work harder in the winter if you don’t.
What Chu needs to do is to fund an intensive R&D program to create roofing materials that lighten when exposed to light and heat and darken in their absence. This can be paid for through Cap’N Trade funds.
There is also a natural model to follow. Shade trees help keep the sun off you house in the summer. The trees lose their leaves in the fall and let more sunlight fall on your home. We need a government program to create an artificial, affordable shade tree that can be manufactured using ‘green’ production methods. Again, Cap’N Trade can pay for it.
In the meantime, we should all go up on the roofs and wrap our homes in aluminum foil before summer starts.
PS: Be sure to put the ‘shiny side’ out!
crosspatch,
You pegged it. AGW is a social movement. It is not about climate per se at all.
It is about how to order life so as to achieve a balance. Religions have been doing this better for far longer.
AGW as science is a scam. There is no pending human caused apocalypse. There is no record of great climate changes to justify the sturm and drang of the AGW promotion industry. There are no predictions that AGW promoters have made about climate change that have come true.
The credibility and power the AGW community has in the public square is not due to predictions of anything that has actually happened. The credibility is due to excellent marketing.
New Administration Announces Global Warming Initiative
The administration has announced that besides Cap and Crunch, they will take a proactive stance against Climate Change by requiring the following:
1) All structures in the United States and her Territories must be painted white.
2) All road and parking lots must be white.
3) All automobiles and any other vehicles must be white.
4) All clothing must be white, especially hats.
5) All man-made objects must be white.
6) All pets must be white.
7) All exterior grade paint must be white.
8) Anything that is outside must be white.
9) Anything that is outside that is NOT white, MUST be reported to the authorities.
10) Interior colors will be governed by a different proclamation.
“A light or white roof will help with summer cooling if you live in a sunny climate but will make your furnace work harder in the winter”
Not true. Your black roof radiates energy into space much more efficiently at night than a white roof does. In winter, night is much longer than day. Also sun angle is so low in winter, you don’t get much if any warming from it anyway. And any warming you do get from winter sun will dissipate if there is the slightest breeze and the roof goes back to being a net radiator.
A white roof coating with insulating ceramic will save you money in any climate AND make your roof last decades longer than it otherwise would.
Ray (12:10:29) : That shows how little that guy understands about the greenhouse effect. That the photons are reflected or delayed (i.e. absorbed and reemitted) does not change anything
Please read what Niels Bohr said about that inexisting “Greenhouse effect”:
http://www.giurfa.com/gh_experiments.pdf
John W. (10:02:42) :
We have this in finance, ‘valuing’ assets on the basis of discounted cash flow out to ‘infinity’, inputting ‘perpetual growth’ rates.
Nothing has to be changed if you get your estimates wrong for year or two or even more, coz the model is ‘normalised’ further out.
Think typewriter manufactures circa 1979 (wonder what happened to Olivetti http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti)
But we can agree that if anybody doesn’t agree then they sir, are worse than Hitler.
darwin (12:18:06) :
How they go from the logrithmic CO2 forcing to gain a feedback 900% more, they don’t really explain — at least not in a language I can understand.
I’ve read some related articles and the authors call it “loop”, which would work similarly as a quantum tunnel. I consider those positive feedbacks are a species of “convenient” creators of energy from void. Our work never ends and from any scientific assessment, there is not any “loop” creator of energy from nothing. If the energy is distributed among all the store of energy systems, how is it possible the amplification of the stored energy to densities which didn’t exist previously? Is it a “convenient” rewriting of thermodynamics laws? I will show you an example taken from nature, specifically from today’s registers, at 15:00 UT:
Ti air = 301.05 K
Tf air (one hour later) = 301.25 K
m of water vapor (RH = 85%) = 0.0255 Kg
Energy stored by water vapor:
q = 11.6586 J
m of carbon dioxide = 0.00069 Kg (Conc. = 387 ppmV)
Energy stored by carbon dioxide:
q = 0.116 J
Energy stored by Nitrogen:
q = 329.51 J
Energy stored by Oxygen:
q = 240.52 J
How possible it is that people think the CO2 is warming the Earth? Considering that the CO2 emissivity was 0.25, which is an exaggeration, the amount of energy radiated by the CO2 would be 0.087 J. The latter amount of radiated energy would cause an increase of the surface temperature, which is also questionable, of 0.05 °C from the total increase of 0.2 K in one hour.
The Price of Going Green: The Biggest Tax Increase In World History
Published by Frosty the Know Man at 2:15 pm under The Economic Debate
A reminder of the stakes for the Waxman-Markey global warming / cap-and-trade bill from CEI’s Myron Ebell:
If enacted, H. R. 2454 would be the biggest government takeover of the economy since the Second World War, which is the last time energy, food, and other basic commodities were rationed. It would also be the biggest tax increase in the history of the world and would cause a colossal transfer of wealth from consumers to big businesses.
From: http://thechillingeffect.org/2009/05/27/the-price-of-going-green-the-biggest-tax-increase-in-world-history/
This is facism, nothing more, nothing less.
Here is all you need to know about roofing materials, color, absorption properties, etc: http://www.fsec.ucf.edu/en/publications/html/FSEC-CR-670-00/
Conclusions
FSEC has sponsored testing on over 60 samples of common roofing materials. The testing provided data on the spectral reflectance characteristics of the samples. Data was also provided on the reflectance properties as integrated over the ultraviolet (UV), visible (VIS) and near infrared (NIR) portions of the solar spectrum. Tests were also performed on the far-infrared reflectance of the samples allowing calculation of their emittance. The results suggest the following conclusions:
All colors of asphalt shingles evidence poor solar reflectance (3 – 26%)
An improved white asphalt shingle using the conventional process showed only modest improvement (31% reflectance)
White elastomeric coatings showed high solar reflectance (65-78%)
Other white roofing systems showed high solar reflectance:
– White concrete tile: 73%
– White metal roof: 67%
– White cement shingle: 77%
– White EPDM and Hypalon products: 69 – 81%
We identified the need for a consistent sample surface substrate for the comparative evaluation of paints and coatings.
The potential success of spectrally selective roofing materials, with their reflectivity concentrated in the near infrared region, is compromised by the higher spectral energy content in the visible wavelengths of solar radiation.
Their odds wheel is in fact a very good analogy for their global climate model and I’m sure just as accurate in its predictions. The 400 runs of the GCM will produce the average of the values they put into the model, just like the odds wheel.
And on roof surfaces. Here in Australia, practical experience tells us grey reflective metallic roofs are the best. Very high albedo when the sun shines. Relatively low outgoing heat radiation when it doesn’t. Also very low insulation. So probably a bad idea in cooler climates.
Because of the remarks about the Climate Policies of the Obama Government this publication is NOT off topic:
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
How NOT to Defend America
By Alan Caruba
Does anyone believe that we don’t live in an increasingly dangerous world; one in which nuclear weapons are proliferating and worldwide Islamic terrorism threatens our nation and others?
The first months of the Obama administration bode ill for the safety of the United States. Calling on the United Nations to rebuke North Korea for what North Korea has always done, fire off missiles and test atomic bombs, is as useless a response as could be imagined. Consider this approach in light of the administration’s cuts to a much-needed missile defense system for the homeland.
Organizing a serious inspection system of every ship entering or leaving North Korean waters would go much further to reducing its ability to ship its weapons to others with bad intentions. Is it an act of war? Is routinely using U.S. national holidays to demonstrate its belligerence a signal of their intentions? They have already said they do not intend to abide by the 1953 armistice agreement.
What has been Iran’s response to President Obama’s extended hand of friendship? They have sent their warships into international waters, although it can be argued they want to protect the oil tankers on which their economy depends. They have tested new longer range missiles, making it clear they can now target Israel and others in the region. They continue to work on developing nuclear weapons.
In a recent commentary, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy, warns that the Obama administration has dispatched a diplomat to Russia to negotiate a new bilateral treaty to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with the possibility of reducing by as much as a third of what is left of our arsenal of nuclear weapons. You can bet the Kremlin is delighted with this prospect.
In another move, Gaffney warned that the Obama administration wants to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that was rejected by a majority of the Senate a decade ago. The treaty would permanently prohibit the U.S. from underground nuclear testing. Good news for North Korea, Iran and every other nation that wants to threaten us.
At the same time, while babbling endlessly about “energy independence”, we live in a nation that sits atop vast reserves of coal and oil. Since the 1970s, however, successive administrations have taken steps to ensure that we can neither mine, nor drill for any of it.
Not a single new oil refinery has been built in the U.S. since those years when the oil industry had windfall profits taxes imposed and other measures that deterred the prospect of domestic exploration and development.
We have a President who is on record opposing the building of any new coal-fired plants to provide for our growing need for more electricity and has rescinded any exploration for oil or natural gas reserves along our vast continental shelf.
Thanks to the environmental organizations the United States has allowed ideology to trump common sense regarding our energy needs and the arms agreements the Obama administration is pursuing would leave us unable to fulfill our obligations to the many nations that depend upon our nuclear umbrella to protect them.
The Obama administration has a Transportation Secretary who wants the government to “coerce” everyone to abandon automobiles in favor of mass transit and bicycles.
We have an Energy Secretary who says the answer to a non-existent global warming is to paint the roofs of all buildings white to reflect the Sun’s radiation.
The administration has a science advisor who wants to shoot soot or something else into the atmosphere for the same purpose.
We have an Environmental Protection Agency Director and an environmental advisor to the President who believe that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” instead of a gas that is vital to all life on Earth.
We have a Congress that is contemplating a ludicrous Cap-and-Trade bill that would impose a tax on the emission of carbon dioxide on all energy producers and users for the purpose of deterring global warming at a time when the Earth is now ten years into a cooling cycle. It would destroy an already fragile economy.
As General Motors and Chrysler ready themselves for bankruptcy and huge downsizing measures, the Obama administration has imposed a new standard for gasoline use in automobiles that will require that they be smaller and more dangerous. Nor is there any indication that Americans want to purchase or drive such models.
A recent Rasmussen telephone survey revealed that 75% said that finding new sources of energy to reduce our dependence on imported sources of energy should be the goal of our government.
And, finally, we have a President who has rather casually said that the nation has run out of money.
Does any of this suggest that Congress and the White House have abandoned anything that resembles common sense? Has the unconstitutional looting of the national treasury done anything other than to debase and devalue the dollar? Are we less safe now that we no longer have the robust national security policy of the past eight years?
The Obama administration, in concert with Congress, is seeking to disarm the nation at the very time we need to expand our military capabilities. The same administration is seeking to impose “global warming” mandates and restrictions that threaten our economy.
Ideology, whether it is about the environment or about national security, endangers our nation at every turn.
From: http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/
It is my personal opinion the current Government is purpetrating TREASON,
to the US Constitution and the American People.
Adolfo Giurfa (13:12:25) :
Thanks for the article. This is why every time I take an infrared spectrum of any molecule or mixture, they don’t heat and start boiling. Once the energy is absorbed, it does not absorb more energy… this is why we can measure spectra, else I would see my absorption band go to the “roof”.
A chemical to stop melanin production in skin tissues (in order to comply with recommended whiteness): Anthraquinone.
It affects the liver a little but taking it will increase your skin’s albedo 🙂
Molon Labe (00:46:55) :
They should be forced to watch Feynman talk about organic farmers:
I often find it tantalizing to imagine how different the world would be, if educators and students had over the last several decades drawn inspiration from the incredible Feynman and his wonderful relationship to his equally incredible father instead of falling under the sway of leftist brainwashers like Bill Ayers, Saul Alinsky, Chomsky, et al. Mr. Feynman discusses how and what his father taught him and the nearly perfect understanding of what it means to be a scientist that he developed as a result, in the other segments of the interview you linked and I would recommend that anyone here, who still has children in your home, watch the whole thing. You will be hard pressed to find a better model of how to raise a child to be the finest human being they are capable of being. If all the “scientists” our colleges and universities have produced in my lifetime were instilled with Feynman’s understanding of what that label really means and any portion of his sense of personal integrity, “scientist” would not have fallen to its’ present state, where it is now nearly synonymous with whore. We certainly would not be inundated by daily press releases declaiming how they have definitively shown this, that, or the other thing, when the evidence they have gathered is usually not enough to justify even a weak suspicion that they are correct. In this alternate universe, we would have very few declarations of proven knowledge, but I’m fairly confident that what humanity was able to really understand about the world and universe we inhabit would be many orders of magnitude beyond our current pathetic state.
@ur momisugly Adolfo Giurfa (13:12:25) :
Do you have more recent experiments to confirm this? There must be some simple experiments that can be performed to verify or falsify Bohr’s conclusions.
BTW: Like others, I’m frustrated with the lack of curiosity over this. Science is never settled. I’m tired of hearing ‘CO2 is a grenhouse gas so it must be causing climate change.’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6350237.ece
I’m usually up-to-date on what’s been posted. If this has been posted before, please “snip” it, but this is so ridiculous, it’s funny:
Burping of the lambs blows roast off menu
From The Sunday TimesMay 24, 2009
Burping of the lambs blows roast off menu
Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor
GIVE up lamb roasts and save the planet. Government advisers are developing menus to combat climate change by cutting out “high carbon” food such as meat from sheep, whose burping poses a serious threat to the environment.
Out will go kebabs, greenhouse tomatoes and alcohol. Instead, diners will be encouraged to consume more potatoes and seasonal vegetables, as well as pork and chicken, which generate fewer carbon emissions.
“Changing our lifestyles, including our diets, is going to be one of the crucial elements in cutting carbon emissions,” said David Kennedy, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change.
I simply don’t know what to say.
OT:
Sarkozy in climate row over reshuffle
By Ben Hall in Paris
Published: May 27 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 27 2009 03:00
President Nicolas Sarkozy’s desire to appoint an outspoken climate-change sceptic to a new French super-ministry of industry and innovation has drawn strong protests from party colleagues and environmentalists.
Claude Allègre argues that global warming is not necessarily caused by human activity. Putting him in charge of scientific research would be tantamount to “giving the finger to scientists”, said Nicolas Hulot, France’s best-known environmental activist.
I do believe that’s the longest link I’ve seen:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/a2b172ba-4a54-11de-8e7e-00144feabdc0,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fa2b172ba-4a54-11de-8e7e-00144feabdc0.html%3Fnclick_check%3D1&_i_referer=&nclick_check=1
“Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire.”
No, not to build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land but to smite those who who would destroy us all.
I have never read or heard of such unmitigated rubbish trying to pass as something emanating from Academia as this absolute tripe from the once-respected MIT.
Keep in mind that MIT developed the A123 LiFEPO4 technology….that’s what I do, put battery packs together. A good run of Hybrid and Plug in electrics would be good for MIT, assuming that get a cut for the technology. A123 is now asking the Obama admin for $1.2B to build a manufacturing site in MI.
No, I am not building automobile packs and no I would not profit from the green movment. No, I don’t believe the earth is heating up and yes I think CO2 is a gas that plants need to live on.
Messages from all over the world must count for something?
Canada Has a Frigid May after a Cold Winter
By Joseph D’Aleo
May has been frigid slowing the planting and emergence of the summer crops in Canada. Late freezes and even snows are still occurring regularly and can be expected the rest of the month.
See full PDF at: http://www.icecap.us
And: Extreme cold weather events kill children in Peru
http://www.peruviantimes.com/extreme-cold-temperatures-cause-death-of-133-children-under-the-age-of-five/
And: Record low temperatures measured in 21 US States, some breaking 100 year old records: http://www.iceagenow.com/Record_Lows_2009.htm
And: Glaciers growing in the Himalayas: http://www.iceagenow.com/Glaciers_Growing_in_Western_Himalayas.htm
And: Record cold and early snow in Australia and New Zealand
Coldest May morning on record in Australia – 22 May 09 – Two far north Queensland towns have experienced their coldest May morning on record.
Cooktown, north of Cairns, dropped to 10 degrees Celsius – two degrees below its previous record low, while Coen on Cape York Peninsula recorded just 10.4 degrees.
At Ravenshoe, temperatures as low as 3C were reported, while at Mareeba, the temperature dropped to 9.4C.
http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2009/05/22/43515_local-news.html
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/far-nth-qld-wakes-to-coldest-may-morning/11932
New Zealand misses autumn – goes straight to winter – 21 May 09 – NZ Herald – Rotorua awoke to the rare sight of snow this morning with the eastern suburbs and hills behind the airport coated.
Weather analyst Philip Duncan says winter has “well and truly arrived early”. “It’s like we haven’t had an autumn. We had a warm April but there’s been no in between,” he said yesterday. “We are two months away from the coldest part of the year, so to see temperatures this low is certainly eyebrow-raising.”
Yes, I know, it’s only weather, not climate!
But when 100 year old cold records are broken it’s a mighty strong indicator that we are cooling down, don’t you think?